The Power of Now

The Power of Now

Eckhart Tolle

This is a book which comes with a highly complex idea about the past, future and present. I always had this fascination about how our mind is deeply connected to the past and moving thoughts and energy to the future but rarely connected with the full attention to the present.

The first part of the book is a self awareness exercise in which the author makes some questions about our consciousness and how to keep identified with our mind instead of our inner self reproducing mental standards which make people suffer from anxiety, frustration and depression.

Enlightenment of our consciousness  is to get rid of those endless dialogues in which our self is imprisoned by questions about the future or even memories from the past draining our vital energy with these repetitive patterns of thoughts. The proposition is to stop to pay attention to this inner voice. Make it more evident, be there with full spirit and work in favour of the moment you are living in. 

Our self is looking for an unstoppable flow of thoughts which brings the mental illusion that we have problems. According to the author, there is no problem, only situations that we should avoid labeling as a negative. The power of now is to live what needs to be experienced without resistance. And here I had a break and thought: “This is blind reality acceptance".

The book goes beyond and explains that it does not mean that you shouldn't try to improve or change your reality, what it says is that actually besides that keeping calm and focused not resisting to the reality itself will help you to understand it and maybe act accordingly to adapt.

My best quote for this book is:

“Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure. In this world, that is, at the level of forms, everyone 'fails' sooner or later, and all achievements end up becoming nothing. All forms are impermanent”.

In this hectic society, standing there, with no action, only calmly sitting, observing and doing nothing sometimes is a good exercise. The old oriental wu wei is a technique involving external inactivity and lack of resistance to achieve higher grades of consciousness. 

This reading is an important exercise about reading ourselves and understanding our triggers and motivations, how we use mental strategies to foster our self centered spirit and avoid deeper connections with this inner voice and how we constantly are avoiding to live the instant, the present.